Classrooms are the germiest places in school, survey says

Nearly seven in 10 school nurses cited unsanitary habits as the top cause for germ spreading among kids at school, according to a new Pfizer Consumer Healthcare survey. Photo Credit: Pfizer Consumer Healthcare / Shutterstock

If your kids are sniffling and sneezing, they're not alone. Nearly seven in 10 school nurses cited unsanitary habits as the top cause for germ spreading among kids at school, according to a new Pfizer Consumer Healthcare survey.

Pfizer (Children's Advil, Children's Robitussin and Children's Dimetapp) surveyed nearly 500 school nurses online from Sept. 8 to 15, 2015, and found classrooms were the easiest place for a child to come into contact with germs (59 percent). Other places included school buses, handrails in the hallways and cafeterias.

While most kids get sick in the winter months, nearly half of all school nurses (41 percent) reported colds as the number one illness they're seeing in the first month back and more than half (55 percent) said that many kids start getting sick between two and four weeks after the start of school, while 19 percent see it as early as week one. Stomach bugs come in second as the highest illness at 36 percent, followed by coughs (13 percent).

The survey also found the top two reasons kids ask to go to the nurse's office are for medicine (29 percent) or to go home (27 percent). School nurses admit that six percent of kids just want to hang out there. When notified that their child is sick, 48 percent of parents ask if they need to pick them up from school and 22 percent ask to speak with them. Only three percent of parents think their child is faking it.

The most common excuses heard from kids were "I just don't feel good" and "my stomach hurts."